Luxuries in Zimbabwe aren’t easy to come by - unless you are a member of, or affiliated to ZANU PF to some extent or another.- and then the opulent lifestyle is apparent to all.

The latest casualty of the ZANU PF avarice are the motor vehicles seized by the police from believed illegal diamond miners and traders. I do note that the articles in the press make no mention of any court cases against these people, so we have to assume that they are assumed “guilty until proven guilty” - or, as in some cases, no further action is being pursued.

When I worked out in criminal courts in Zimbabwe - 25 years ago admittedly - once a case had been completed, only then could the court apply a forfeiture order and the goods (that had been imported illegally, used in the commission of the crime, or were to be destroyed by officers of the State).

In the event that the goods that were illegally acquired were forfeited to the State, they were not for State consumption, or use, but were to be sold by the State.

Apply that to the vehicles impounded from the miners. Were they subject of a court forfeiture order?

If they were - and I very much doubt it - then they should have been the subject of public sale - not just released erroneously and illegally to sympathetic members of Mugabe’s party just because they can!

The problem does not just extend to motor vehicles - it includes the illegal obtaining of foreign currency and the importing of luxury goods for all strata of Mugabe’s hierarchy.

We have read, on numerous occasions, how the State has showered members of the judiciary with widescreen plasma televisions, satellite kits and posh motor vehicles. ZANU PF is reportedly broke.

Where do they secure the funding from?

Easy… Mugabe’s loyalist Gideon Gono, the erstwhile Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe - a man who would have us believe that he was offered a very senior position within the World Bank.

Mugabe and his lapdog Gideon Gono

A man of inventive accountancy, misguided principles and misbegotten policies, he somehow manages to break every banking rule in the book claiming that the standard rules of banking ‘do not apply in Zimbabwe’ - probably because he does not want any authoritative figure or body sticking their noses into his running of the RBZ.

But probably a little bit late as an full audit of the RBZ is intended and no doubt it will prove all manner of skulduggery within the financial workings between the RBZ and Mugabe’s ZANU PF.

Then, of course, there is the farms that have been seized for the ‘landless blacks’ - and was given instead to Mugabe’s loyalists, security chiefs and lackeys. And Mugabe is determined that the land grab will not be reversed, but it will need, at the very least, some re-engineering…

Mugabe’s minions have been shouting loudly that the remaining few white commercial farmers be chased off their land and the land ‘appropriated’ by Mugabe-ites. And this, they said, should be done before the ‘unity government’ takes control.

Which could be any day, week or month as Mugabe bullies his way back into power.

Robb WJ Ellis
The Bearded Man